Why is it that when we have an exponent like 32, we say its a multiple of 4 and not a multiple of 2? In general, various numbers are both multiples of 2 and 4, and I don’t know which to choose.
first find the all multiple of 4, then find all multiple of 2, of the given number. Then substract number of multiple of 2 from number of multiple of 4. simple!
What?
I think you’re talking about the problems where they ask for the unit digit of something like 3^32
I think the reason we look at the 32 being a multiple of 4 is because the unit digit patterns are often a cycle of 4.
So for the above example of 3 the unit digit pattern is 3, 9, 7, then 1
32 is a multiple of 4 so we get to just look at the 4th unit digit in the pattern: 1
To say it tis a multiple of 2 is cool but doesn’t tell us where in the pattern to look since it is a pattern of 4, if we used 2 then we may think the unit digit is 9 which is incorrect.